Recent Posts

2351

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2016, 11:55 AM »

Amazing news from the UK: The UK just struck oil

-IainB (March 16, 2016, 11:03 AM)

Yeah but it was in Iran, and they're planning to strike that oil again and again.

2352

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2016, 11:38 AM »

Neat! Once again the Linux build is just a day behind the regular releases:

Unity announced/released Unity 5.3.4 and an open Beta 5.4 yesterday, and today both are available to test on Linux.

Build #2016031601

This one's a double feature!
Yesterday at GDC, we announced public beta access for Unity 5.4, and you won't be left out!

Official Installers for 64-bit Ubuntu Linux:
5.3.4f1: http://download.unit...1+20160316_amd64.deb
(sha1sum
e855743ec80241f54db3a349b3a68a93365c20dd)
5.4.0b10: http://download.unit...0+20160316_amd64.deb
(sha1sum b29f9d8fe9bcbfe5d1759003c10e66aa66e54f8a)

Unsupported installer for Other 64-bit Distributions:
5.3.4f1: http://download.unit...-5.3.4f1+20160316.sh
(sha1sum
98cc96e82c5d8703c954ebcdffc392c5e790b5cd)
5.4.0b10: http://download.unit...5.4.0b10+20160316.sh
(sha1sum 8465fee80eff49595a0f172ce77d35398423dd74)

Torrent (Includes both installers):
5.3.4f1: http://files.unity3d...4f1+20160316.torrent
5.4.0b10: http://files.unity3d...b10+20160316.torrent

Release Notes: 5.3.4f1
Update to Unity 5.3.4 (includes lots of OpenGL Core fixes for linux)

Release Notes: 5.4.0b10
First 5.4 release for Linux: see main release notes at http://unity3d.com/unity/beta

-http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-on-linux-release-notes-and-known-issues.350256/#post-2556301

2353

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ark: Survival Evolved is free for the weekend on Steam (through Aug 31, 2015)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 15, 2016, 11:55 PM »

It looks like they've taken the Online PVP mode, called Survival of the Fittest, and released it as a free-to-play game, with no micropayments/IAP/DLC as far as I can tell.

Survival of the Fittest

We are excited to announce that ARK: Survival of the Fittest is now available as a totally free, standalone, ‘Multiplayer Online Survival Arena’ built for eSport gameplay!

SotF originated as a spin-off mod which came to be with the release of our ARK: Survival Evolved development kit. The mode was first available as a ‘Total Conversion’ and debuted worldwide with a 70-person slaughter fest of a tournament. Following the success of the game mode, tournaments, and feedback from the community, SotF has been refactored into its own competitive game including four new modes, a robust ranking system, massively boosted performance, cosmetic-tiered rewards, lobbies/parties/on-demand-matchmaking, and constant iteration. That’s not all though! On top of releasing as a free to play game, SotF will also be awarding cash prizes for the top players in each ‘Survivor League’, so ARK survivors can start playing their favourite game at a professional competitive level!

-http://store.steampowered.com/app/407530/

I prefer the slower, more relaxed^*, solo/coop play. But for those who enjoy competitive PVP, check it out.

IMO it looks like they borrowed heavily from the general concept behind The Hunger Games.



*But still somewhat nerve wracking and dangerous with all those wild dinos out trying to eat you!

2354

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 15, 2016, 05:56 PM »

21's Bitcoin Computer is a Raspberry Pi-powered mining tool

Raspberry Pi - the DIY computer celebrity.

-Arizona Hot (September 22, 2015, 02:11 PM)

Hrm, sounds like a moneygrab. Even with a "custom mining chip", it's hardly going to be able to generate any worthwhile amount of BC, considering people are running massive amounts of monstrous custom ASICs.

-f0dder (September 22, 2015, 04:44 PM)

Hmm... I guess I missed the part where it comes with a custom mining chip. Some custom, specialized-for-mining chip might be pretty expensive.

As far as I understand, ASICs aren't necessarily ultra powerful machines. They just do one thing and do it really well, and do it even better in parallel/groups. So I suppose it's feasible that the custom mining chip can perform at a decent hash rate for a single machine, and is intended to be used with a mining pool or in large quantities (or both) if any actual BTC are intended to be mined from it. Unless there's something I'm fundamentally misunderstanding about how mining works.

But other than that, I kind of like the idea of using a little SBC as a non-mining, full Bitcoin node. It would be kind of like a PirateBox.

2355

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 15, 2016, 05:48 PM »

Meanwhile the $40 Odroid-C2 is superior in virtually every way, other than a slight price premium.

2356

Developer's Corner / The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2016, 02:43 PM »

Here's an article that discusses in detail some of the theory and methods behind cameras in 2D games. I'd seen it quite a while ago, perhaps when it was first published last May, but I recently rediscovered it and thought it was worth sharing. What surprised me most about it is that complex camera systems in games mostly seem to come down to just a few simple (but clever) tricks, but when combined it results in quite elegant behavior.

A few years ago mouser posted about a video analyzing the camera behavior in Super Mario World. While hearing it explained while seeing the game was interesting, I found this newer article to be much more useful in seeing how things work because the areas of interest are visualized for us, like so:



It's a fairly long article, but it goes into some really useful detail analyzing how many popular/classic games have designed their camera system to allow the player to see important information in the game.

Highly recommended.

http://gamasutra.com...in_SideScrollers.php

2357

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2016, 03:01 PM »

Free e-books:
Declutter Your Mind: Twelve Secret Steps to Clear Mental Clutter for A Lifetime of Peace and Bliss (free only today)

The Coincidence Makers (free today)

Guitar: For Beginners (free until March 12th)

-panzer (March 10, 2016, 05:01 AM)

Fixed that for you.

2358

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2016, 02:56 PM »

Windows 10 isn't perfect, but all-in-all, I generally find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 7. (I skipped Windows 8 completely.)

That said, Windows 7 is a nice OS. Stick with it if you're happy with it.

2359

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 45.0 released both x86 and x64

« Last post by Deozaan on March 08, 2016, 05:00 PM »

Introduce a new preference (network.dns.blockDotOnion) to allow blocking .onion at the DNS level

-https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/45.0/releasenotes/

Why would a person want to block .onion?

2360

Non-Windows Software / Re: Dan Gilmor on moving to Linux

« Last post by Deozaan on March 07, 2016, 04:01 PM »

More like a losing battle IMO. With development costs being what they are today, I can't see too many programming shops that would be willing to spend that sort of money rolling their wares out to run native on Linux, even if they could. The industry leader always creates a gravity well it's difficult to escape from.

-40hz (March 07, 2016, 01:40 PM)

I'm not sure about that. A lot of the game engines these days are supporting multiple platforms natively. Whether that's through HTML/WebGL/Javascript tricks or game engines like Unity using the cross platform mono scripting language, etc., we're seeing many, many more new games supporting Windows, OSX, and Linux these days. Admittedly, this isn't often the case with games from AAA studios. But the recently released OpenGL replacement Vulkan, which game engines and graphics cards will soon (read: over the next few years) support, has many people in the games industry excited. I think we're (gradually) moving toward a more unified, cross-platform future.

Of course, that won't change any of the currently released games which only support Windows. But as time goes on, I suppose we'll always have things like DOSBox, the Internet Archive, or even VMs, to allow us to play older games on newer systems. Perhaps even in the browser.

2361

General Software Discussion / Re: Slysoft shutdown (by government action?)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 07, 2016, 01:01 PM »

LOL, just remeber that the government/state does these things to protect you

-hpearce (March 06, 2016, 07:14 PM)

Renegade, is that you?

2362

General Software Discussion / Re: Help! Email bouncing after changing hosts

« Last post by Deozaan on March 05, 2016, 07:54 PM »

Thanks for the suggestions. They managed to get it fixed today.

They informed me that they "have added the domains to the local domains" for me. I'm not sure what that means, but my emails and forwarders seem to be working now.

Thanks again!

2363

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 2GB additional Google Drive storage for free

« Last post by Deozaan on March 04, 2016, 02:39 PM »

Topic's subject should be changed to reflect that the offer's long expired.

-Midnight Rambler (March 04, 2016, 10:26 AM)

I did what I could.

2364

General Software Discussion / [SOLVED] Email bouncing after changing hosts

« Last post by Deozaan on March 04, 2016, 02:35 PM »

Hi folks,

I use a ton of forwarders. Seriously a ton! I have somewhere between 600-700 of them. I use forwarders like other people use maildrop or mailinator. Anyway, I recently changed hosting companies for my websites/domains, and I had the weird experience of my websites not working until I updated the DNS entries for the domains, but my email working fine until I updated the DNS entries.

So now my websites are working fine, but any email sent to what are called "add-on" domains in cPanel just bounce. Whether they're forwarders or an actual mailbox. Here's the error I'm getting in the bounce email:

Remote host said:
550-The mail server could not deliver mail to [email address].  The
550-account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the
550 proper dns entries.

Note that all my forwarders are working just fine for my primary domain. It's just the add-on domains which can't seem to accept any email whatsoever.

I'm hoping the folks here at DC can help me figure this out because so far technical support at my host hasn't been very useful for this particular issue. I was super-ultra happy with my new host until this issue came up. But if it can't be solved I may need to find other hosting. Forwarders are that important to me. They fixed it! 

2365

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Deozaan on March 03, 2016, 05:58 PM »

^ aahh okay, that makes sense: I thought (like Miles I think) that that arm made sounds -- I mean directly as opposed to indirectly.

-tomos (March 03, 2016, 05:49 PM)

Well, I mean, MilesAhead wasn't wrong that the belt had pegs like a cylinder on a self-playing piano. But this machine added in another layer of complexity/abstraction by having the pegs pluck an arm which drops a marble instead of just having the peg pluck a string/prong itself.

2366

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Deozaan on March 03, 2016, 05:31 PM »

Did I get it wrong or did it look in one of the sections of the vid where it showed the internal belt feeding through, that there were squares on the belt that actually made the melody?  Sort of like the cylinder on a player piano.  It didn't seem to me as if the marbles were required accept as eye candy.  Maybe I imagined it.

-MilesAhead (March 03, 2016, 04:04 PM)

I was under the impression that they were what was causing the marbles to come down at the appropriate time. You can see it in action from about 35-45 seconds into the video. The pegs move an arm which lifts open a gate and lets a marble drop out.

As best as I can tell, all sounds are produced by the marbles hitting something. And other than the guy moving his hands up & down the guitar frets and spinning the crank and flipping switches now and then to activate/deactivate certain parts of the machine, everything else is done by the marbles.

2367

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Deozaan on March 02, 2016, 11:56 PM »

I just came across this:

Wintergatan - Marble Machine (music instrument using 2000 marbles)

2368

Non-Windows Software / Remix OS for PC Beta Launch

« Last post by Deozaan on March 01, 2016, 12:37 PM »

Remix OS for PC is a custom flavor of Android designed for a traditional desktop/laptop experience. It has the equivalent of the start menu, task bar, tray, and notification/action center. It also allows app windowing and running multiple apps simultaneously.

More details about Remix OS in general can be found here:

http://www.jide.com/en/remixos

Details and downloads for Remix OS for PC can be found here:

http://www.jide.com/en/remixos-for-pc

Remis OS was also briefly mentioned previously on DC here.

2369

Developer's Corner / Re: Blog Essay: Reconsider - Startups Don't Need to Disrupt the Universe

« Last post by Deozaan on February 29, 2016, 07:01 PM »

I guess I somehow missed this the first time around and just rediscovered it again today. Here's a good excerpt:

I’m going to pull out another trite saying here: It feels like honest work. Simple, honest work. I make a good product, you pay me good money for it. We don’t even need big words like monetization strategy to describe that transaction because it is so plain and simple even my three year-old son can understand it.

2370

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Deozaan on February 29, 2016, 05:37 PM »

Here's an interesting one. A really simple technique, used in a unique way, with some nice music. I recommend you watch full screen, or you may think the video is just a still image.

City - SanBase

Credit for the music is River Pilots, but I don't know if that's the name of the song or the group that made the music. And I can't find any more information about it.

I think I found them here: http://riverpilotsmusic.com/

2371

Living Room / Re: Funny, Strange, and Confusing Error Messages

« Last post by Deozaan on February 25, 2016, 08:18 PM »

NECRO THREAD ARISE!!!

I just encountered this one today while upgrading AdGuard from v5.x to 6.x:

2372

Developer's Corner / Re: Dice analyzer machine project

« Last post by Deozaan on February 25, 2016, 03:28 PM »

Are the numbers in those statistics ordered? e.g., If it rolls a 19, is that a 19 on the chart? Or is it more like "recognized pattern number 19" (referred to as classes in this post)?

And finally, how do you eliminate the possibility that it's your rolling mechanism which is unfair?

2373

General Software Discussion / Re: Unity (Game Engine) Comes to Linux: Experimental Build Now Available

« Last post by Deozaan on February 25, 2016, 02:10 AM »

It may be useful for you to peruse the relevant forum. Maybe others have experienced the same issue and somehow found a solution that doesn't require buying a new GPU.

2374

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Tips

« Last post by Deozaan on February 25, 2016, 01:36 AM »

Windows 10 has a new horizontal volume slider which is great for touch screens, but lacks the power to adjust volumes individually which I enjoyed in Windows 7's Volume Mixer. You can still activate the volume mixer by right clicking the speaker icon in the tray and selecting Open Volume Mixer, but that just feels like extra work to me to get back old functionality I liked before.

A solution I found to this was to add a registry entry, as detailed here.

Add the following "path" in your registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MTCUVC

Then add the following key in the above path:

EnableMtcUvc DWORD

0 = old
1 = new (default)

The link above has .reg files you can download to more easily set/change these values.

2375

Developer's Corner / Re: Dice analyzer machine project

« Last post by Deozaan on February 25, 2016, 01:25 AM »

Then i studied the die images closer and realized that the "18" label is worn off to make it look like a "19", and in fact the clusterer HAD successfully distinguished the two very similar looking sides

Pretty cool!

-mouser (February 24, 2016, 11:27 PM)

That is pretty cool. It's a case where human error may have mistaken the die value as a "19" but the computer was able to distinguish the subtle differences.